[EM] Blake: Majority meanings

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I'd said:

>Blake says that it's dogmatic to say that majority rule is important.

Blake replied:

Not necessarily. If you believe that majority rule is important because
you have some argument to that effect, then that isn't dogmatic, and
that is in fact the position I take. If, however, the belief is based
on the fact that that's what your teacher said in 6th grade, then I
consider it dogmatic.

I reply:

Excuse me, but did I say that majority rule is important because your
teacher said that it is?

I thought that I said that majority rule is important to many people,
judging by what they say. Likwise for the goal of getting rid of
the lesser-of-2-evils problem. And the similar goal of minimizing the
need for drastic defensive strategy.

Standards can be the basis for arguments, but it doesn't make any
sense to say that standards must be defended by arguments. If I and
many others value majority rule, that's reason enough to propose methods
that honor it. I'll do that without proving to you that majority rule is
valuable. As I said before, your standards aren't wrong, just because
they're different from those of most others. Maybe majority rule isn't
important to you. That's you, and that's fine. But you have a problem
when others don't share your standards.

Blake continued:


I also think the postmodern approach of saying that all standards are
equally valid tends to lead to a kind of dogmatism, because it closes
down rational debate in favour of socially imposed opinion. This is a
more subtle argument, but it has the same effect.

I reply:

Not everything can be decided by debate. Should we debate whether you
should like Chocolate or Vanilla ice-cream? Surely you can see that that's 
ridiculous. Both tastes are valid, and social debate isn't
relevant to them.

Socially imposed opinion?? I don't want to impose on you a liking for
majority rule. I couldn't care less. Where do you get "socially imposed
opinion"? I'm the one saying that different personal preferences and
standards are all valid for individuals. It sounds as if you're the one
who wants to impose your opinions on others.




>If Blake doesn't consider it an important standard, that doesn't mean
>Blake's wrong; anyone can have his own standards. But to many people
>majority rule is important. Blake suggests that it's arbitary to say
>that "majority" means a majority of the voters. But that's how it's
>always used, and it's the meaning that people consider important.

Blake continues:

Majority always means more than half, but the question is, more than
half of what? More than half of the people casting a ballot, more than
half of those expressing a preference between the candidates being
compared, or more than half of the electorate?

I reply:

Easy question. To everyone who says "electoral majority", it means
a majority of the voters. And what are the electorate if not the
people casting a ballot? Those who are registered but not voting?
Those who could but don't register? If we use those interpretations,
then wv still passes the defensive strategy criteria, and margins
still fails them. Margins is a big violator of majority rule even
if you define majority in terms of those larger sets of people.

As for saying that X has a majority against Y if a majority of those
expressing a preference among them vote X over Y, then "X has a majority 
over Y" means exactly that X pairwise beats Y. There, now,
you see we already have a word for your majority. The problem is that
sometimes there's a cycle of such "majorities", and so we must considser
other ways of choosing.


As I said, in electoral usage, a majority means one thing: A majority
of those voting on a particular race. Why is that important? Because
a majority like that can get any result that it agrees on. It's a uniquely 
powerful set of voters. So it's reasonable to define majority
rule as the ability of such a group to get their way. Continued tomorrow.

Mike Ossipoff




I choose the second one,
and this follows from my reasons for favouring majority rule in the
first place. But if I had no reasons, I might pick something different.

>Of what relevance is a non-majority of people who don't even bother to
>vote?

I hope that was a rhetorical question.

>But if few of those who voted consider a particular pairwise
>comparison important enough to vote on, that says something.

That's why I don't consider a vote of 3 to 1 to be as decisive as 100 to
50 (I know you don't either).

---
Blake Cretney (http://condorcet.org)







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